Monday, January 16, 2006

Liar

So, let me ask you - do you feel safer yet? Will the ReThugs & Democrats wake up now? You've been napping long enough.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."

Emphasis added.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice blog billycreek,I guess you read the article too,what about the FBI saying that NSA clean up its own mess? Keep blogging.

Anonymous said...

'Suspected' means if an FBI agent shows up at your front door and flashes his/her ID you've been put on notice.

Your life will never be the same. You will probably second guess your every relation and public personna. No dissent.

Mission accomplish.